Well, I haven't yet been able to find David's recommended book, Tulipomania.
But his review did remind me of another really unique and fascinating book:
Extraordinary
Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay.
Amazingly enough, this 150 year old book is still just as timely as the
day it was written, almost every story on the Internet Bubble references
it at some point, and it remains readily available, you're even likely
to find it in the remainder bin at Barnes and Noble for just a couple of
dollars. I recommend that you buy it.

MacKay's book, while it also devotes a section to the Tulipomania craze
in Holland, is more wide ranging and includes chapters on the South Sea
Bubble, the Crusades, Alchymists, dueling and other crazes. Throughout,
he focusses on repeated episodes when entire societies got caught up in
these irrational hysterias and behaved as if the laws of science or economics
had been temporarily suspended. In every case, hope overcame reason,
as folks labored under the delusion that this time was somehow different,
that their form of cultural madness was unique and actually made sense.
Always, and sadly, they were wrong.

The most interesting aspect of these hysterias is just what their capacity
to stampede entire populations could mean to a nation's politics.
We know in our own culture about horrible irrational episodes like the
internment of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII (see Orrin's review
of ). The herd mentality which such episodes reflect and which McKay
portrays are particularly frightening for the vision they offer of what
a pure (or purer) democracy, where mass sentiment is unchecked, might look
like.

The version of the book that I own has a cover blurb by Andrew Tobias
saying: "If you read no more of this book than the first hundred
pages--on money mania--it will be worth many times its purchase."
I couldn't agree more. As David suggests, reading about Tulipomania
gives you a weird frisson of recognition and it seems like you could just
substitute the words "Tech Stocks" for "Tulips" every time it appears.
Were he alive today, Charles MacKay would likely be hard at work on a new
chapter on the Internet Boom. Read him and avoid such traps.